When roofing tiles are formed from cement and sand mixture, they are produced in very large numbers and in order to reduce the number of moulding pallets to a minimum, the tiles are steam cured and removed from the pallets as quickly as possible. However they are of an awkward shape to automatically handle because of the existence of the troughs and lugs, and further because different pallets produce tiles of slightly varying shape, and because the tiles require handling before they have attained their 28 day strength. In addition to this, when the tiles move in a factory, they are usually transported edgeways, while "on flat", by a conveyor belt, but to reduce breakages, they are finally stacked "on edge" in face to face juxtaposition. This means therefore that the speed of movement at stacking must be reduced to a small fraction of the speed of movement of the edgeways conveyor belts, since tiles in face to face juxtaposition occupy less conveyor length than when in edge to edge juxtaposition.
It is therefore the main object of this invention to provide a method and a machine whereby tiles can be conveyed firstly on flat, with one edge leading another (at relatively high speed), and subsequently placed "on edge" in close proximity to one another, in face to face juxtaposition.
Tiles are not always released at identical speeds, nor at equal spacings, and it is often necessary to have them spaced from one another. It is another object of this invention to provide a machine which is capable of stacking tiles notwithstanding variations in spacings between them while they are released and conveyed on flat edgeways.
A still further object of the invention is to provide a machine and a method of stacking tiles which enables them to be stacked with a minimum of handling by operators.